Suicide of Kurt Cobain
On April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain, the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band Nirvana, was found dead at his home on Lake Washington Boulevard in Seattle, Washington. Forensics investigators and a coroner later determined that Cobain had died on April 5, three days prior to the discovery of his body.[1] The Seattle Police Department incident report stated that Cobain was found with a shotgun across his body, had suffered a visible gunshot wound to the head, and that a suicide note had been discovered nearby. Seattle police confirmed Cobain's death as a suicide.[2][3]
Following his death, conspiracy theories that Cobain was murdered were spread and reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, partially due to an Unsolved Mysteries episode dedicated to Cobain's death.[4]
Memorial and cremation[edit]
On April 10, 1994, a public memorial service was held at Seattle Center, where a recording of Courtney Love reading Cobain's suicide note was played. Near the end of the vigil, Love arrived, and distributed some of his clothing to fans who remained.[32] In the following days, Love consoled and mourned with fans who came to her house.
Cobain's body was cremated. Love divided his ashes; she kept some in a teddy bear and some in an urn.[33] She took another portion of his ashes to the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in Ithaca, New York. There, some of his remains were ceremonially blessed by Buddhist monks and mixed into clay, which were used to make tsatsas.[33] A final ceremony was arranged for Cobain by his mother on May 31, 1999, that was attended by both Love and Tracy Marander. A Buddhist monk chanted while Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, scattered his ashes into McLane Creek in Olympia, Washington, the city where he "had found his true artistic muse".[15]: 351
Toxicological ambiguities[edit]
Some controversy arose after Cobain's death regarding whether his 1.52 mg/L blood morphine level indicates irrefutable evidence of a fatal overdose.[38] The ambiguity on this subject has been contributed to by a lack of clarification whether the 1.52 mg/L figure from Cobain's toxicology report represents a "total morphine" assay (which includes a variety of long-lived morphine metabolites that can increase in the bloodstream as a result of a series of typical heroin doses throughout an extended time period) or a "free morphine" assay (a more specialized test that counts the only those morphine molecules that have not yet been broken down by the body into protein-bound morphine metabolites).[39]
The distinction between a free morphine count and a total morphine count is important in determining a survivable dose. A 2002 study in Forensic Science International by Meissner et al. "to distinguish fatal from non-fatal blood concentrations of morphine" showed that a total morphine count of 1.52 mg/L can be survivable, while a free morphine count above 0.12 mg/L is fatal. This study observed a highest non-fatal total blood morphine count of 2.11 mg/L in drivers who also tested positive for other drugs, indicating that being conscious enough to attempt driving a car is possible in extreme cases for subjects with a total morphine count significantly higher than 1.52 mg/L (the figure from Cobain's study).[40]
The same study also reported that the highest free morphine count from a heroin overdose survivor was 0.128 mg/L, and lists an extreme case where a subject died with a free morphine count of 2.8 mg/L (21.8 times higher than a lethal dose) and a total morphine count of 5.0 mg/L.[40] Based on this a 1.52 mg/L free morphine count would be 11.875 times higher than a lethal dose.
However it remains unknown whether Cobain's 1.52 mg/L figure represents a free or total morphine count. The technology and know-how to perform both free and total morphine assays has existed since the 1970s. Total morphine assays are cheaper, easier, and more commonly performed, especially in hospitals where the pharmacologically active metabolites of morphine provide most of its longer-lasting analgesic effects, and in law enforcement, since the full picture of morphine and all its metabolites provided by a total morphine assay provides a better indicator of intoxication and impairment than a free morphine assay. Meanwhile, free morphine assays are less common because they require more specialized equipment, methods, and expertise to perform, making them limited in use outside the context of research studies, and free morphine assays must be performed relatively soon post-mortem in order to be accurate.[41] Additionally, most research published on the use of free morphine assays for cause-of-death in heroin cases has been published after 2000.
While it remains unconfirmed whether Cobain's toxicology figure of 1.52 mg/L was the result of a free morphine assay or total morphine assay, Randall Baselt's opinion given in the Seattle Post Intelligencer is consistent with an interpretation of the 1.52 mg/L figure being a total morphine count, and Baselt is considered a world expert in toxicology. Baselt's 1975 paper on heroin deaths in San Francisco relied on total morphine counts, and found that "morphine blood levels per se are meaningless in attempting to assign a cause of death in a Medical Examiner's case, since morphine levels found in narcotics users dying of causes other than overdose averaged slightly higher than those of the overdose victims. However, a positive finding for morphine in blood is certainly a further indication of narcotics use and is probably indicative of usage within the four hours before death."[42]